Officials with two anti-abortion groups are blasting Bob Schaffer, a Republican candidate for a Colorado U.S. Senate seat, over his defense of human-rights conditions in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory where allegations that factory workers must undergo forced abortions are common.

Colorado Right to Life accused Schaffer of closing his eyes to reports from Chinese workers on the islands about forced abortions. Steve Curtis, head of American Right to Life Action, an offshoot of Colorado Right to Life, said Schaffer should explain his stance.

"The pro-life movement will no longer give a pass to candidates like Bob Schaffer who look the other way when Chinese women are forced to abort their children," said Curtis, also a former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, in a statement released late last week.

The two groups said they requested to meet with Schaffer on the issue but were turned down.

By Monday afternoon, Curtis' tone had softened toward Schaffer, but he still maintained that the actions of some factories in the Northern Marianas were not worthy of Schaffer's support.

"As a die-hard pro-lifer, I have a problem with supporting any government that allows those atrocities to occur," Curtis said.

Schaffer, who visited the Marianas in 1999 while in Congress, said on his return that he found factory working conditions generally satisfactory. He said last week that allegations of forced abortions were among the things he looked into on that trip.

"I absolutely did not look the other way on this issue," Schaffer said.

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He added that he interviewed "dozens" of workers and met with local religious leaders about the topic.

'98 report alleged abuses

A 1998 report by the U.S. Office of Insular Affairs found squalid living conditions for foreign workers in the Marianas. A statement given to investigators from a Chinese woman showed what happened to workers who got pregnant:

"According to Miss Y, if the company found out a worker became pregnant, they would fire her and return her to China, where she would be 'forced to have an abortion.' Knowing this, workers who became pregnant either tried to self abort or find someone in Saipan to perform the abortion. Some women ran away and hid so they didn't have to have an abortion."

"I found the reports credible," Schaffer said. "I've not seen them refuted."

Schaffer said that during his visit, he tried to determine how often abortions occurred.

"In five days, I did not observe a forced abortion or meet anybody who had any knowledge of them," he said, adding that no subsequent examples were ever brought to him.

Dick Wadhams, Schaffer's campaign manager, said Schaffer enjoys considerable support from the mainstream of the anti-abortion movement — which, Wadhams said, Colorado Right to Life is not.

"These are people who are on the fringe of the pro-life movement, and they do not represent by any stretch of the imagination the hundreds of thousands of pro-life Coloradans," Wadhams said.

Founded in the early 1970s, Colorado Right to Life is considered a rogue organization by some abortion foes for its all-or-nothing approach to overturning Roe v. Wade, the court case that legalized abortion in 1973.

The group, which estimates membership of more than 5,000 people, was kicked out of the National Right to Life organization after attacking Focus on the Family founder James Dobson in an argument over a court ruling on late-term abortions.

American Right to Life Action is an outgrowth of Colorado Right to Life, with a focus on establishing the right of "personhood" for fertilized eggs.

Jim Pfaff, president of Colorado Family Action, the political arm of Focus on the Family, defended Schaffer's anti-abortion credentials, calling him a "consistently a pro-life legislator."

Contrasting conclusions

Schaffer has said he found largely satisfactory conditions for factory workers when he visited the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands in 1999. His appraisal contrasts with government reports, investigations by human-rights groups and findings by journalists in the 1990s that portrayed near-slavery conditions where, in addition to forced abortion, allegations of child prostitution and the prohibition of religious activities were common.

According to Colorado Right to Life officials, Shiu Yon Zhou, a member of the group, was forced to undergo a forced abortion in China and later sought refuge in the U.S., where she eventually became a citizen.

She said Schaffer should "apologize for being part of the problem. He calls himself pro-life, but how can he be when he is not outraged by Chinese forced abortion?"

Reports of human-rights abuses in the Marianas have resurfaced in recent campaigns.

In 2006, Ralph Reed, a top leader in the Christian conservative political movement, ran for lieutenant governor of Georgia. Casey Cagle battered Reed with TV ads that said his primary opponent had defended "sweatshops" that forced women to have abortions and pressured children into prostitution. The ads had an effect, analysts said. Cagle beat Reed, 56 percent to 44 percent.

The same year, Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., was re-elected despite similar allegations from his opponent.

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